THE REACH OF WAR: THE BAGHDAD TASK; Bush Names Envoy in Kabul to Be Ambassador to Iraq

By JOEL BRINKLEY

Published: March 11, 2005

President Bush has chosen Zalmay Khalilzad, the ambassador to Afghanistan, to become the new ambassador in Baghdad, administration officials said Thursday.

Mr. Khalilzad, a blunt, garrulous Afghan-American, replaces John Negroponte, who found the job so aggravating that he was agitating to leave after less than a year in the post. Last month, Mr. Bush chose Mr. Negroponte as the nation's first director of national intelligence.

The selection of Mr. Khalilzad was not unexpected. The Bush administration intends to announce it on Friday, an administration official said.

Since becoming ambassador in Kabul in 2003, he has helped oversee reconstruction of the country and the elections there last year.

In Iraq, if he is confirmed, he will work with the new government that is still being formed following elections in January, as it writes a new constitution and then holds another round of elections in December. But overshadowing all of that is the continuing violence that makes it difficult for the ambassador in Baghdad even to travel outside the green zone, the fortified area where the United States keeps its embassy and the ambassador's residence.

Mr. Khalilzad, a prot? of Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz since long before Mr. Bush took office, served as a senior director on the president's national security council staff during the early years of Mr. Bush's first term. Administration officials say his deep knowledge of Afghanistan and its internecine politics was invaluable during and after the Afghan war.

When Mr. Bush addressed Congress shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, it was Mr. Khalilzad who provided the tough references to the Taliban, like the note that ''a man can be arrested if his beard is not long enough.''

He served as special envoy to Afghanistan before his appointment as ambassador in 2003, and his knowledge of the tribal players has seemed to serve him well there. Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, he praised the decision by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to offer a government position to one warlord who has been accused of rights abuses.

''I think that this co-optation in exchange for cooperation on critical issues is a reasonable option for the government to consider,'' he said in answer to a question.

In Iraq, Mr. Khalilzad will face another complex cast of political and tribal leaders -- without the lifelong affiliation with the country that has been so useful in Afghanistan. His primary mission will be to expedite the training of new Iraqi police and military forces so that they can take over security duties from American troops. The Bush administration recently asked Congress for an additional $5.7 billion for training this year. Though Mr. Khalilzad became a Washington insider, he was born in Mazar-i-Sharif when Afghanistan was still ruled by a king and the town was a prosperous commercial center in the north.

He played basketball during high school in Kabul and attended college at the American University in Beirut and the University of Chicago. He earned a Ph.D. in 1979. He took a job at the State Department in 1984 and worked for Mr. Wolfowitz, who was director of policy planning. When Mr. Wolfowitz moved to the Pentagon, Mr. Khalilzad moved with him.

During the Persian Gulf war, he got the attention of Mr. Cheney, who was secretary of defense. They stayed in touch during the Clinton administration, and in 2000 Mr. Cheney chose him to head Mr. Bush's transition team at the Pentagon. Then in May 2001, he was named to the National Security Council post.